


Strangers No More

by CookandBaker



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 09:51:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13808712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CookandBaker/pseuds/CookandBaker
Summary: Regna was a daughter of a powerful Dwarven Lord, but in the years since his death, she has lived with her mother and sisters apart from Dwarven society on the easternmost slope of the Grey Mountains. After the Battle of Five Armies, the life they have built for themselves is destroyed and they flee to the Lonely Mountain.Regna learns what it means to be a dwarf, to love and be loved. A wedding is announced, and she finds her life changing for better or for worse.





	Strangers No More

Chapter 1: Durin's Day

Regna was the baby of the family. The youngest of three sisters, she had been the especially concern of their mother when they first took habitation on the lonely slopes on the Eastern edge of the Grey Mountains. Regna had nearly been lost to fever many times, and many times she nursed back by sheer, unyielding, dwarven stubbornness. Their first winters had been harsh, and the youngsters often spent days huddled by the hearth of the ruined and abandoned Mannish hut, desperate for every little bit of warmth and sustenance. Many years had passed, hard years. Mother had worked herself to the bone to keep them warm, to shelter them, to hunt for food amongst the wild goats and rabbits, forage for berries despite her natural dwarven ignorance of the forest's herbs, trees, flowers and greens.  
  
Times were different, now. After the sun had set and the last light of Durin's Day faded, Regna waited patiently for her mother and sisters to make their way home. She had been today, as with many days, left to tend to many tasks while Mother attended to the flocks. Segna and Bregna, her elder sisters, were away and due to return. Segna was away hunting, and Bregna trading furs in a Mannish village. Regna was no hunter, or herder. She could splice wood and do the simplest of smithing but was hardly the dwarven ideal next to her brawny, wild sisters. However, Regna was not ashamed.  She did the tasks that were scorned by many dwarves, but that were necessary. She kneaded the bread for their supper, stoked the ovens and lit them. She spun the course grey wool that covered their backs and tanned the hides and furs. She did the mending and preserving. She dried the herbs for medicine and made crude recipes.  Once, when Segna had stumbled home with a great gaping wound from boar-hunting, she had stitched her sister and fed her as she mended.  
  
Regna  knew that the store of food in their cellar and the well-kept and repaired cottage was what would keep them through the winter. Sometimes, she wished she knew what it was like to be a true dwarf, deep within a mountain. In the olden days, dwarven women could go their entire lives without seeing the light of day. Instead, they went deeper and deeper into the mountains and earths beneath. They mined and they smithed and their entire world was the mountain. Regna knew of no such life. She knew little of life beyond these eastern slopes and the surrounding woodlands. She had a few fleeting memories of their early lives as daughters of Gregna, a Lord in the Council of Ered Mithrin. Their lives had been ones of comfort and privilege according to Segna and Bregna's occasional whispers. Mother spoke little of the past.  
  
Their lives were still precarious, living as they did two weeks from the nearest Grey Mountain outpost. Anything could happen.

* * *

 

The last light of Durin's Day faded, but Regna barely took noticed of it.  She tended to their supper and awaited her mother and sisters' return.

  
Segna was the first arrive, and she said nothing, but brought her game, this time an antelope, to the shed and began making preparations. She had grown into a wild dwarrowdame, and Regna could recognise the scuff of her heavy boots scraping across the sandy ground when they came around to the house. Segna could disappear for weeks on hunting excursions and had grown very accustomed to saying very little.  
  
Mother was next to arrive. She began setting three places at their table. It was usually bare, but Regna had made a bit more of an effort as today was Durin's Day. They had a tradition, in recent years, of eating a slightly better meal, with good bread, a roast and some cheese. There would be some ale and perhaps a sweetmeat afterwards.  Dwarves ought to sing songs, but they had little to sing of that would not make the heart sick with longing, so Mother would play on her pipes and they would sit around the fire.  
  
Segna came into the house, sat down with them and waited. After awhile, she rose again and made her way outside, to the woodpile with her great axe. Regna arose next, busied herself with some dusting and Mother with some weaving. Hours passed, and Bregna had not come. Perhaps she would not come, Regna thought.  
  
At last, Mother said that Bregna had been delayed. Segna was called in and their ate their meal in silence. No one mentioned any ale or sweetmeats. It was a night of no significance, then. They would not have a Durin's Day this year.  
  
After supper, they sat about the hearth. Mother did not take out her pipes. Instead, she said that she would sing them a song that she had not sung for many years. Regna looked up from her whittling and Segna from her mending, wordlessly. They were surprised.  
  
"Far over the misty mountains cold," began Thurka, daughter of Kurka, "Through dungeons deep and caverns old."  
  


And so she sung an ancient song of her people, of Durin's Folk. Regna felt something stir within her that she had never felt before. The soaring pain in her heart threatened to burst and she squeezed her eyes shut, barely breathing as each note and word of the song hung in the air. She clung to them in her soul and they remained in her even when the night had ended.


End file.
